6 Tips to Writing Product Descriptions That Sell

Product descriptions can make all the difference between getting a sale and losing a sale. In fact, many companies hire professional copywriters to describe their products due to the importance of the few lines of text that accompany an image of their product — and the power of impact they can have on their sales.

But here at iPage, we understand that not every business has the budget to hire professional copywriters. And that’s what we’re here for! We’ve come up with 6 tips to writing your own product descriptions that will pack the same punch as those written by the professionals.

1. Write Unique Descriptions

While it may be tempting to copy all or part of a product description from another source, it’s crucial you don’t give into that temptation. Instead, create unique copy for every product, especially if you have a large number of products on your website. By not putting time or effort into how your products are described, you can weaken the value of the product. Additionally, it’s harmful to your SEO because Google penalizes websites that use duplicate copy. Plus, your own unique product descriptions are also much more likely to resonate with your customers and reflect your brand’s true personality.

2. Write For Your Ideal Customer

Before you start writing your product descriptions, think about your ideal buyer. This will help you tailor the language, style, and the tone of the writing. The objective is to make the product description appealing, persuasive, and relevant. You can only do follow through with this when you know your customer, what’s important to them, and what they want.

3. Talk About Benefits, Not Features

Most businesses are excited about a product’s features. After all, it is the features that make the product so useful, desirable, or effective. The features of your product also make it stand out from the competition. But, while all of that is true, a product’s features will not be the factor that really sells it: the benefits of the features is what sells products.

Let’s say that again: The benefits of the features sell products.

What does this mean? Well, think about why your product will make your customer’s life better. Why is a particular feature important to them? What will these features help your customer do or prevent? These are the things you should write about.

The soap’s description title is, “hands so clean, you could eat with them.” This brings an activity into the customer’s mind, and a way in which the product will be used: to get clean to do something important: eat! And then the description adds in another activity: “give the next person you encounter a high five.” In one line of text, this brand has made a mundane activity like washing your hands something that feels exceptional and fun, if done with their product. Now, that’s a selling product description!

4. Make It Easy To Scan

Most people do not read anything on the internet in detail anymore. That includes product descriptions. To make yours effective you have to write them in a way that is easy to scan. How? Use fonts that big and clear. Include descriptive headlines that include key selling points, and consider using lists instead of paragraphs. You can also experiment with different colors, such as making the headline a different color to the main body text. As always, images are also a must-have as a part of your product descriptions.

5. Avoid Turn-Off Words And Phrases

Avoid words and phrases that don’t contribute to the description in any meaningful way. One of the most common examples is “excellent quality.” Surprised by that? It’s true! You see, you’re never going to come across a good business person who will describe their product as “medium quality.” So with that said, you can expect that “excellent quality” is going to be the status quo in any product description. Therefore, while it may be true and you might want to say it, it’s not adding any unique or meaningful value to your description. It’s much better to prove or demonstrate that the product is excellent quality with other words and phrases — rather than using the actual words themselves.

Also, two other simple rules of thumb: Avoid words with negative connotations and use superlatives sparingly. When you do use superlatives, back them up with facts.

6. Tweak For SEO

Before diving into this tip…remember: Always write your product descriptions for your customers – not for search engines. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t tweak your content to make it more search engine friendly. For example, write a selling description title using the tips above, and then try to add the main keyword of the page in the in a natural way. Then, write the body text of your description without thinking at all about SEO. When you’re finished, go back through it and see where you can easily drop in a keyword or two without effecting the flow.

Also, try to mention the most important selling points in the first 100 words. You can then use this text again as a meta description.

Writing product descriptions can be challenging if you have a lot of products. But if you take the time to do it right, the process can become fun! More importantly, you will appeal to you ideal customers, convince them of your value, and ultimately sell more products!

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